Thus attended, she pressed forward along the Appian Way toward
the outskirts of the city--past broad palaces and villas, with
encircling gardens and open paved courts--past shrubberies, fish ponds,
and statue-crowned terraces--past public baths, through whose broad
doorways the people swarmed by hundreds, and whose steps were thronged
with waiting slaves; now stopping until the armor bearer, running to the
front, could make a passage for her through some crowd denser than
ordinary--then gliding onward with more rapid pace, as the way became
clearer--and again arresting herself for a moment as the stream of
people also tarried to watch the approach of the gorgeous chariot and
richly uniformed guards of the emperor Titus Vespasian. At length,
turning the corner of a pillar-porticoed temple, which stood back from
the street, and up the gentle ascent of whose steps a concourse of
priests and attendants were forcing a garland-decked bullock,
unconscious of the sacrificial rites which awaited him within, she stood
beyond the surging of the crowd and in a quiet little street.

It was a narrow avenue, in whose humble architecture brick took the
place of stone; but by no means mean or filthy, like so many of the
streets of similar width in the central portion of the city. Stretching
out toward the open country, and not given up to merchandise or slave
quarters, its little houses had their gardens and clustering vines about
them, supplying with the picturesque whatever was wanting in
magnificence, and evidencing a pleasant medium between wealth and
poverty. The paved roadway was clean and unbroken; and far down as the
eye could reach no life could be seen, except a single slave with a
fruit basket balanced upon his head, and near him a group of children at
play.

Passing down this street, AEnone came to a spot where one of the great
aqueducts which supplied the city, crossed the roadway diagonally with a
single span. At the right hand stood a small brick house, built into the
nearest arch so snugly that it seemed as though its occupants could
almost hear the gurgling of the water flowing overhead from the hills of
Albanus. Like the other houses in its neighborhood, it had a small
courtyard in front, planted with a shrub or two. This was the home of
her father, the centurion Porthenus. Stopping here, she was about to
enter without warning, according to her usual custom, but as she
advanced, a dwarf, whom she recognized as the sa